NZ was a little Britain in 1956. 94% of the population defined themselves as European. But NZ is changing. Looking round these streets can sometimes feel like a foreign country, but it's just suburban Auckland. Immigration is changing the face of our nation. One in four of us are now born overseas, and every other day, there are news reports of climbing immigration numbers. Lots of NZers are worried. They're worried about immigrants taking our jobs, driving up house prices... Can a small country sustain large numbers of people coming in? So I want to know ` is immigration good for NZ or bad for NZ? Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2016 RADIO: It's Night-time Talk with Kerre McIvor on Newstalk ZB. Nigel Latta and I are having a chat about immigration. We'd love you to join in. You wanted to get a cross-section of people's opinions about immigration? Yeah, because immigration's one of those things everybody's got an opinion about. Um, but do we think it's a good thing? Is it a bad thing? You know the number. Give us a call. Most of the migrants around Christchurch I see by and large are fairly good, and they're great users of the bus service, but aren't always the greatest drivers. I'm not a bigwig or anything like that, but if I could move to China and buy land in China, then I have no problem with a man from China coming to NZ and buying land in NZ. In England right now, I mean, they've just had completely mass immigration, and the country is turning into just a` In many areas it's a disaster zone... So, do you think we're getting it right or wrong in terms of numbers and mix and all that kind of stuff. Um, I think we need to be incredibly careful. I don't really think there's any management of it. As long as there's people willing to fit into our culture and become NZers, there's no harm done. I think we have to be careful to make sure that it is multicultural and that we are getting immigrants from all over the place as opposed to just from one destination only. For example, probably, you know, probably China. Where do our immigrants come from? It turns out that changes all the time. But last year, 8% came from the Philippines, 11% from the UK, 16% from India and 17% from China. And why do people come here? Meet the Liu family. And then it's just pinch it all together? We all came here mainly because of my daughter. We wanted to give her a better education ` better life. That's what we think. But I think we did the right choice. So you've been here how many years now? 13 years. And so Mark was a university lecturer? He teaches Chinese to foreigners. He had a good job in China. It's a big` one of the biggest universities, so it's quite a good job. Presumably, Mark and Diana, was that a decision to use your English name, that was about, kind of, coming to a new country and you thought it was going to be easier? Yes, easier. If I tell you my Chinese name, it's hard for you to pronounce. What's your Chinese name? Rong Jung Nan. Rong Jung... Nan. Nan. No, see, I'd remember that. (LAUGHS) Diana ` I'd go, 'Ooh, I know it was something.' But Rong Jung Nan ` how is that any harder than, you know, Nigel? Nigel is hard as well. See? Nigel's hard. What would my Chinese name be? I think... Ni-gel. It sounds like milk porridge. (LAUGHS) Milk porridge? < Yeah. Nigel, yeah. Immigrating to NZ is a big decision for any family. The three main reasons given for coming here are for a better lifestyle, a good education system and because people think it's a safe place to live. But how easy is it to immigrate to NZ? Do we just let anyone in? An immigration expert is going to see if I might get the 140 points needed to move here. For the purposes of this exercise, I'll answer everything truthfully, but we'll just pretend that I am from England and I'm applying to come and work and live in NZ. All right. So, I'm gonna ask you a number of questions, starting with your age. 48. Married? Single? Married. Two children. And qualifications? A BSc in Zoology, an MSc in Marine Science, a master's degree in psychology and a postgraduate diploma in clinical psychology. Gosh. That was when education was free. And in terms of character ` you or your wife, have you ever been charged or convicted of any offences? No. That's a good answer. Look, there's a whole lot more I would need to know but what I can tell you is NZ is an option. You're going to get 10 points for your age, 60 points for having a recognised master's degree, 20 years of work that is related to your master's degree is going to give you another 30 points. So, that's gonna leave you on 120 points. You can now go and file your expression of interest in residency, and you will not be selected. Right. So, basically, NZ doesn't want me? NZ sort of wants you, but NZ is going to test you and your skills against the local labour market. You've got to work out, 'How do I get that job?' And I can tell you that, overwhelmingly, the only way you're gonna get that job now is to resign your job, get on a plane, fly to NZ. You'll probably apply for 30, 40, 50 roles. You won't get interviewed for more than two or three of them, cos you haven't got a work visa or residency. And you'll see your wife and kids in probably another three or four or five months. You wanna do it? Is there anywhere else that would be easier? Like, is there anywhere else that would take me without all of this palaver? Because honestly, I think, if I had to resign my job and leave your family for months on the off-chance, I'm not sure that I would take that gamble. Every two weeks at Immigration NZ, 650 applications are drawn with the chance for permanent residency. With my 120 points I can go into the draw, but without a job offer, I won't be selected. You're guaranteed to come out of the pool if you have 140 points, uh, or if you've got a minimum of 100 points as well as a job offer. When you draw people from the pool, my kind of vision of that is it's like Lotto, and there's balls spinning round and you draw them out. I wish it was exciting as that. We run a computer system that, every fortnight, pulls the people that qualify out of the pool based on where we set the points. It literally is someone just pressing the enter key. No brass bands. No brass bands. In December 2013, Karthik was one of those selected, and 20 days ago he lived in India. But now he's renting a room in an east Auckland suburb. Every day, he talks to his wife and son back in India. Hello. Hi. How are you? Hi. My son, Rithvik, he's all excited to come to NZ. What does he imagine NZ will be like? He is mesmerised with huge buses and all that. Multi-wheeled buses and all that. The buses are very good, Rithvik. Back in Chennai, Karthik's wife and son fend for themselves. They hope that Karthik can find a job soon. How does she feel about coming? Entire family is in India and we are just separating from them. I know it's a tough situation that we have to face, but all we are doing, this is for the better future of my son. Why did you choose NZ? I choose NZ because information communications technology is in demand here, and NZ offers better work-life balance, and it's a great place to bring up children. To settle in NZ, you need a resident's visa, which is split into three categories. Karthik's visa is in the skilled migrant category, which makes up 60% of our immigrant numbers. But there's also the family category, which includes the family of immigrants already here, and represents about 30% of our visas. And 10% is left for the humanitarian category, which contains our 750 refugees. But the big question is ` why do we want immigrants in the first place? Because it's good for NZ. And, you know, as a small country of 4 and a half million people, uh, we're not going to get wealthy trading with ourselves, you know? Immigration is really here because it contributes to NZ's development as a country from an economic perspective, from a social perspective and in terms of us being connected internationally. Karthik earned more than 140 points, so he can immigrate without a job. But to get that many points, he needed experience in an industry where NZ is short of workers. People worry about immigrants coming in and taking jobs from Kiwis. And there's no evidence for that. It does not occur. So, immigrants come in and they fill very different jobs, or they fill gaps in our labour market requirements. So people should be assured that there might be some exceptions, but by and large, the evidence is quite clear ` they do not take jobs from NZers. I thought the Chinese or Indian community would be NZ's largest immigrant group. But I was wrong. I've come to see a family from NZ's largest immigrant community. There's 215,000 of them hidden among us. But it's quite hard to spot them. The number of people coming from the UK is always in the top three or four. And because of a huge influx from the 1940s onwards, they will remain NZ's largest immigrant community for some time. Have you ever experienced any of, you know, racist stuff or, you know, 'Go back to your own country' or...? No. I think we did with the one guy, um, with the car, when I parked too close to him. And I got out the car and he heard that I was British, and he goes, 'Ah, bloody Poms, clear off back to your own country.' Philippa got a job as a project manager in Christchurch, and that gave the couple enough points to get the resident visa. Looking out, this is quite a diverse site. Absolutely. I think there's 15 different nationalities working on the site at the moment. The size of the rebuild in Christchurch means that there just isn't enough NZers to fill the roles that are currently out there in this kind of industry. Ironically, Mark's job is recruiting immigrants for the tech industry. I report directly to my project manager... One of the things that you hear a lot when you start talking to people about immigration is, 'Oh, all these immigrants. They're coming in and taking jobs off Kiwis.' Has that been your experience? No. I mean, certainly here in Christchurch, the unemployment rate is about 5%, and generally speaking, it would be fair to say that that's the 5% that either can't or won't work. There are plenty of jobs here for Kiwis and migrants alike at this particular moment in time. Do you think that you'll stay in NZ, or do you think you'll go back to the UK? The million dollar question. We seem to change our minds almost on a daily, weekly basis sometimes. Both have so much going for them. It's difficult to decide. I was amazed to find out that nearly half of the immigrants that come here are gone within 13 years, returning home or moving on to greener pastures. But for those that stay, are they helping or draining our economy? 1 This film was shown in the UK in the 1950s to promote the government policy of assisted passage for young, keen, able-bodied men and women from Great Britain. So that's NZ, eh? Not much to look at, is it? In fact, that policy remained in place until the 1970s. But the story for immigrants from other countries was a little different. There were 33 laws in place to try and deter the Chinese from even coming to the country. Post-war labour shortages saw the government encourage immigrants from the Pacific Islands, which turned into a big issue in the 1975 election. There was a time when NZ cities were quiet and clean... While roughly the same number of Pacific Islanders and British stayed in the country illegally, police dawn raids saw mainly Pacific Islanders prosecuted for overstaying. And in the '90s, anti-immigrant rhetoric again made headlines. Winston Peters talked of rows and rows of ostentatious homes occupied, in some cases, by children whose parents had no ties to this country other than the price they paid for the house. We look at all that history and it seems pretty terrible, but it's still going on today. The issues around race are still an incredibly divisive topic. I understand that we measure the economic impact of migrants coming into the country, but do we measure the cultural impact of migrants? And how would you even measure that? Yeah, really good question. I think, from a straight out research and evidence base, the answer would be no, and pretty hard to do. 9 out of 10 NZers say they want a multicultural society, but this is where it can get emotional. A feeling that you no longer belong in the place you thought was your home. Why do we become anti-immigrant? Like, how does that sentiment start to arise? Two reasons, I think. One of them is that we don't understand other people and are suspicious of them. So, they look different, sound different. And so that's a basic human characteristic, really. And to get over that, contact is important. The second is that very often, anti-immigrant hostility is associated with economic downturns. And you can understand that to some extent. I mean, an economic downturn ` am I gonna have a job? How do I pay my mortgage? I don't want competitors. I don't want people that are different. I don't want things that are unsettling to me, and so you do tend to target that person who might be culturally or linguistically different to you. And, of course, immigrants fill that category beautifully. The family reunification policy has come under attack for bringing in the relatives of skilled migrants. Since Diana Liu came 13 years ago, more and more of her family has moved here too. When I decided to come to NZ, it's mainly for my daughter. So, I wanted to give her a better education, a better environment to live. And after I came, I realised it's a really good country. And then I just talked to my parents and talked to my brother, family, and they loved to come. Richard, how did you come to the country? Like, what was the immigration policy that you came under? Family reunion. Family reunion policy. So, because your sister was here, then you got to immigrate as well? Yeah. And what do you do here now? What hours do you work for that? Wow. That's pretty hard. A little. A little bit. A little bit? Quite a lot! Just the long hours. I think it's working harder to get a better life. Three years ago they cancelled the policy, so we're quite lucky. So, you were among the last people to come in under that family reunification policy? Yeah. Despite Richard's contribution to the economy, the government began to question the overall value of the family category in general. How does the family category work? You used to be able to, if you'd been granted residence of NZ, sponsor a wide range of your family. Parents, your siblings, um, your adult children. When we did the review, we thought, 'Right. This is not delivering the intended, uh, benefits. 'Uh, we're going to stop that policy. 'And if adult children and adult siblings can make a contribution to NZ, 'they can come under their own steam in terms of the existing policies we have, 'like skilled migrant category.' One of the things that people talk about a lot is that people will come to NZ, they'll bring their parents in, they'll all get superannuation, we're all paying for that. Do you hear that stuff much? My parents are not qualified. You have to live in here for more than 10 years. But my parents are normally half year here, half year China. And especially for parents, they're old and they don't speak English. It's a little bit hard for them to live here for every day in NZ. They don't want to stay here just for the benefit. Why do we let people bring in their elderly parents? Because I can understand the economic value of bringing in the migrant, but if you bring in their elderly parent, surely that's going to be a cost. Can't arrive as a parent and automatically claim Super. And the judgements that you're trying to make through your policy settings is the overall, the net benefit that you're getting for` for the country outweighs, uh, the cost. And, quite frankly, for the skilled migrants, many of whom we're looking to retain long-term in NZ, it's about the ability to bring their parents if they want as part of NZ as an attractive destination. The government tweaks policy constantly if it's not delivering economically. When you look around in places like $2 shops and nail salons, you see people who clearly are immigrants to the country. Is that good for us economically, though? Look, the $2 shop and nail salons are a really interesting case in point. What we found was that the pathway into being able to come into NZ and get residence from starting up businesses, 40% of the businesses that were being started up were actually pretty low-productivity sectors that weren't actually contributing a lot to creating jobs for NZers. As part of that review, things like the long-term business visas, uh, got turned off, and have been replaced with an entrepreneur sort of category that's designed to actually facilitate a smaller number of higher value business start-ups that are generating more economic value and job opportunities for NZers. If you try to figure out what's really happening in NZ, you soon realise that immigration is all about numbers. New figures are released monthly. So if it seems like we're always talking about immigration, it's because we are. The already hot housing market looks set for a further boost, with the number of new migrants coming here hitting a 10-year high last month. NADINE CHALMERS-ROSS: Almost 100,000 people moved to our shores in the past year as our so-called 'rock star' economy powered up. GREG BOYED: And just over 86,000 headed overseas permanently or long-term, exceeding arrivals, resulting in a migration loss of 1900. It turns out these two cards dominate and distort our conversation about immigration. If you say that you are leaving or staying for more than 12 months, you're counted as part of our immigration stats, which doesn't really make any sense because that's also going to include Kiwis moving to Australia, or anywhere else, and international students who are coming here to study with no intention of staying. Which means it's not really immigration in the sense that we all care about, which is the actual number of people moving to NZ to live. So why is it we get given this impression that we get this huge number, and actually once you start drilling down into it, you can chop it up into much smaller numbers, and they're not permanent residents? I guess it depends what story the person disseminating that information wants to tell. And if you wanna try and make out that we're being flooded by immigrants, well, use 100,000. If you wanna tell the truth, break it down. The big debate about, 'Wow, we're at 60,000 net inflow migration into NZ,' is largely a story about less Kiwis leaving NZ and more Kiwis coming home. If we just counted people who get residency, would that be a fairer statistic? Absolutely. I mean, those are the people who have said, 'We want to live here permanently,' and we have said, 'You can.' So I reckon we should look at the number of people granted permanent resident visas. And here's what that looks like over the last 10 years. Pretty much 45,000 people coming to live in NZ every single year. That's roughly 1% of the population. How did we arrive at the 1% target? It's something that we share with Australia and Canada. It's 1% of population. Is there some rationale for that, or is it just, 'Well, they're doing it, so it seems like a good idea'? It's a good idea. They've done it. And I think we should do it. But why do we need this 1% at all? Essentially, we're aging with nobody to help provide labour in the society. The question that I always ask ` who's gonna wipe your chin? So, one of the things that's gonna happen over the next decade is the numbers over the age of 65 are going to double, and we've got things like a dependency ratio. Now, when I was growing up in 20th century NZ, the dependency ratio was four people in paid work to one dependant. Currently, we're heading towards a 2-1 ratio. 2-1? Yes. So, we've got to balance that out. And the way that we're doing that is by encouraging immigrants who are going to contribute economically to the country. If we want to keep getting superannuation in the future, some experts think part of the solution means letting even more taxpaying immigrants into the country. But will they be contributing enough? 1 One of the obvious ways that NZers mix with immigrant culture is by eating exotic food. Hello, can I help you? Yeah. The, um, so, the pork intestines, is that...? But we need to do more than that if we want to help them fit in. Karthik immigrated from India six weeks ago and is attending a workshop that will help him understand the culture of applying for a job here. What's the course for? What's that about? Uh, it is an IT workshop. There are some` few companies coming in to present their opportunities, their hiring process. < Probably also the work culture. The Auckland regional migrant services want new immigrants to fit in successfully to NZ. Sign your name. Sure. My name is Gabriel. I'm from Spain. My background for the last three years is, like, a maintenance manager. I'm from Japan. I've been here a year, and I'm aiming to be an IT tester. Thank you. Uh, my name is Karthik. I came to NZ one and a half months back. I specialise in telecommunications, uh, doing system testing and solution design. I can see we've got a lot of talent in the room, so NZ's pretty lucky to have you. And hopefully we can help you today with understanding the job search techniques that you'll need here to get you into your industry jobs. As you may have noticed, NZ is very multicultural. If you look around your average room in a software company, the faces all look pretty much like this room. That's because we don't really have enough people in NZ right now to be able to do all the things we want to be able to do in software and in IT. If it's all about contributing to the economy, I want to know ` does NZ really benefit from immigration? I was reading this rather dry government document on immigration. And on page 35, I found a fairly ordinary-looking graph that changes everything I ever thought I knew about immigrants. What it does is it compares the tax that immigrants from different countries pay, and then it subtracts the costs to the government ` things like healthcare and education. And what you're left with is the dollar value of the immigrant to NZ. This is the person that's worth the most. An immigrant from the UK or Ireland contributes the most in dollar terms. Nearly $5000 in extra revenue for the government each year. Next is someone from Europe and North America. They're worth $4500. In third place is a person from Asia, who contributes close to $2500. Pacific Islanders create almost $2000. And the category that contributes the least in financial terms... Well, it's me. A NZ-born citizen contributes less than $1000. I've seen lots of graphs. Your graph's amazing. Like, I looked at it and went, 'Really?' Like it was at the end of a movie ` there's a twist and you go, 'Really?' And the surprising thing was the group that contributes the least to NZ is me. (LAUGHS) And me. But the fact that, of all of the groups, I have the least positive impact on the country. Don't take that personally. (LAUGHS) Reality is that we are incredibly selective about who we let in. NZ is full of average people. And what the government's looking for is above average people. We have enough average people like you here, Nigel. Why is the perception of the contribution of immigrants and the reality so different? It's a combination of probably some preconceptions. Undoubtedly some prejudice in there. And I'm a numbers person; the importance of my piece of work is very much about getting the evidence and getting the numbers and letting the numbers speak for themselves. And the numbers also show how foreigners boost the economy in other ways. NZ's fifth largest export earner is worth $3 billion a year. It supports 30,000 jobs, and it's twice as big as our wine exporting industry. International students are big business. And, strangely, they're counted as immigrants if they say they're going to be here for longer than 12 months. It's just a bureaucracy thing. But could it also be a backdoor to obtaining permanent residency? Statistics show that one in five international students become permanent residents. Lei arrived from China 13 years ago to study graphic design and stayed here. She's married Kai and now has a NZ-born son. They visit the Henderson night markets every Friday night. Do you feel like you belong here now? Does it feel like home? This feels more home to me than China. I've been here for 13 years. This is home. Yeah. Lei now works as an illustrator, but it wasn't her plan to stay. I was just like, 'I'll see how I would go. But, uh, if I could stay, I would love to stay.' The truth is the government wanted Lei to stay and contribute. Obviously people that come and study in NZ know NZ well, have got qualifications in areas that we need. You wanna make those pathways to being an option to stay in NZ, uh, you know, really attractive. When you finished studying, how easy was it to find a job? It wasn't really that easy, especially with my name being so Asian-like. In the very very beginning, I used an English name. I did get more opportunities. After a while, I just decided I would just ditch the English name. I'll stick with my real name which is Lei, the very Chinese and Asian name. That is my identity. If you don't like it, you don't have me. Did you experience racism? Oh, there was one time I was in the supermarket. There was this old, old man with a walking stick. He looked so nice. He just came to me and then said, 'Go back to your own country. You're not welcome here.' It's weird because the people who yell out all the racist nonsense, if they were just to stop and think about if you lived somewhere for 13 years,... Yeah. ...it is gonna start to feel a bit like it is your own home. So despite what racist idiots think, Lei and her family can and should call NZ home. But are we bringing in overqualified immigrants who can't get a job, with no chance of fitting in? 1 Inside the Beehive, politicians set our immigration policy. But at the taxi rank across the road, I wanted to see if the government had made a serious mistake. It seems a lot of the time, when you get into a taxi, the driver is an Iranian rocket scientist or an Indian brain surgeon. Why are overqualified immigrants driving taxis? Brankov decided to completely retrain. But what does the big picture look like? I asked Statistics NZ for the figures for taxi drivers from the latest census. And hidden in the numbers is something quite interesting. It says here that two out of three of our taxi drivers were born overseas. And of those drivers, one in four of them have a university qualification, which means they're five times more likely than a NZ-born driver to have a degree. So it is true ` we do have overqualified immigrants driving taxis. But I discovered that this is old news because these drivers with degrees all arrived over a decade ago ` before this policy was changed. And that's because in 2003 we dramatically changed our immigration policy. And that's when we said you couldn't just waltz into the country with a degree. We had to actually need you. We found in the past if you just bring in healthy smart people and don't think about whether they are going to fit into the NZ labour market, you get people who are very overqualified and can't find jobs that relate to their, you know, their backgrounds and their experiences. And that's a waste for both the person and for NZ. So, that was this idea of we went through a stage where actually we literally did have, kind of, rocket science and vets and all sorts of people driving taxis. PhDs and doctors literally driving taxis. There seems to be an area where our immigration policy is currently causing big problems. Are there too many immigrants coming in, increasing demand on houses and causing house prices to spiral out of control? Have you noticed a change in the makeup of your buyers in terms of migrants vs locals. Has it changed over that time? Yes, it has. There's definitely been significant growth in those groups coming to open homes and purchasing houses. I don't think anyone's monitored any of those numbers, but it's certainly a perception. Has that meant that you've had to make changes in your staff? Absolutely. Half the employees at my office are Chinese to address that market. Vendors are asking for that as well. They're saying, you know, 'Isn't there a huge influx into the market? Should I have a Chinese agent?' Chinese buyers are the ones that everybody picks on. What percentage of your buyers are Chinese buyers? So, in the last year, I've sold 49 houses totalling about $100 million worth of property. So, average selling price is $2 million. Um, of those 49 people, eight were Chinese. Eight? Even if immigrants are buying more houses, is it causing problems? And can we do anything about it? Are immigrants to blame for Auckland's housing woes? Not entirely at all. They're just one of many, many factors, the main one of which is not enough houses being built in NZ. Low interest rates in the mix as well. And also, of course, a lot of us NZers are maybe moving in to Auckland for the economic opportunity. But also, the fact that a lot of Aucklanders have not left Auckland. They haven't gone to Australia over the past two years because things are a bit weak over there. So part of the upward pressure is Aucklanders not leaving like they were going to. When you say not enough houses being built, I'm sure there'll be someone at home going, 'Well then, if they're not building enough houses, why are we still letting immigrants in?' Well, the answer is build more houses. The answer is people need to change the regulations. If we are expecting Auckland to be our economic powerhouse over the next few decades, given that we can't just keep relying on agriculture or tourism or manufacturing, then we need to have a city which is going to be able to accommodate the talent and that overseas connectivity. We need to take advantage of, you know, everything we have to offer here. We've got so many rules and regulations in place which are actually preventing the house supply from coming forward. That is where effort needs to be directed, rather than trying to manage the market by, let's say, controlling the number of migrants coming in or what they can do when they come in. How does immigration affect the rest of the country? Well, it doesn't. I mean, one of the issues is that Auckland is a major beneficiary of immigration. And, of course, as part of the Canterbury rebuild, they are getting a lot more immigrants now. But for every immigrant that arrives into Canterbury at the moment, there are four that are arriving into Auckland. So we see a big city effect, basically. Former Immigration Minister Lianne Dalziel is now the mayor of Christchurch. We're probably the least cosmopolitan of the cities, you know? I know Christchurch people go up to Auckland and think they've gone to another country, you know, because it's quite different in terms of the scale. But we're starting to see a much more mixed environment. And diversity is good for a city because it means that you don't get stuck. Because you can get awfully stuck if everyone's kind of the same, and you've got the same old, same old. Traditionally, Christchurch has had a reputation for being slightly racist. And when I went and got a paper this morning and looked at the headline, it was about tourists being told to speak English and then getting beaten up. The Christchurch earthquake in 2011 changed the city in an unexpected way. All of a sudden, the city needed lots of people to rebuild it ` more than NZ could supply. Christchurch needed immigrants. Around half of the 35,000 rebuild workers are immigrants, though a lot of those people are on short-term visas like Raul. This is gonna be the new BNZ building? And how long will it take? Right. Do you have family back in the Philippines? Five kids?! (LAUGHS) Yup. Busy man. Busy man. How long has it been since you last saw them? That must be quite hard. You came here under a working visa initially. Was your plan to go back to the Philippines after the job's done? Why do you wanna stay? Is Christchurch actively trying to recruit immigrants? Yes, we are. And obviously there's a number of companies that are looking for rebuild workers. So that's true. But with rebuild workers often come families as well and come other, you know, desires to actually commit to an area and stay. So you've got to think beyond the rebuild as well. Because there is no point encouraging people to make that degree of commitment if there isn't gonna be a job at the end of the line. So, what does the future look like for Christchurch and the rest of NZ? 1 Auckland's Rangitoto College is the country's biggest secondary school. One out of every three students are born overseas ` much higher than the one in four of the overall NZ population. If you want to see the future face of this country, go and look at a primary or secondary school class. And you're going to see the makeup of this country in 20 or 30 years' time. It's a very good litmus test. Grace Liu came to NZ when she was 8 and is now a year 13 student at Rangitoto college. Because, um, of many factors such as more demand from immigration, people overseas, um, quantity demand should be decreasing... Her class of 16 is half NZ-born, though three of those are kids of Asian immigrants. The other half come from all around the world, and even their teacher, Ms Easton, is Scottish. All of her friends are NZ-born Chinese. I mean, does racist stuff ever happen? Do you ever come up against that at school? Definitely. It does? Yeah. Mostly in junior years. Yeah. I think, remember one time when I was, like, in year nine, I was walking down the corridor, and there were a group of, like, white girls and they were like, 'Oh, go back to, like, Asia' or something, which is pretty racist, yeah. Really? And I'm like, 'Oh, I was born here.' So, you know, it was kind of like... Based on your experience, what NZ needs to do is actually grow up a little bit. Some parts of NZ are functioning like year nine. We kind of need to be year 13. I wouldn't go as far to say that, I think that we're still, like, doing pretty good relative to other countries, so... David, how have things changed since you were a student here? I can use the analogy of food. When I was growing up, we were a meat and three veg family. And that was it. Now there's just a smorgasbord. What I think that the students have moved to very very quickly is this idea of, 'How do I actually pick up the best from these other cultures and add that to my own ideals?' Now, that can be as basic as, 'Oh, I see why all these kids are so good at maths. 'They work really hard at it.' It's really surprising that if you actually work hard, um, you get better at something. Maybe if I worked as hard, I'd be good at it. And that's a pretty special, unique position for a young person to be in, because one of the things that it gives them is an amazing amount of cultural IQ, which, all the research tells us, is going to be vitally important for them in their future because the world is going to be smaller, and your ability to deal with all those cultural issues is going to be really important. So, NZ in 20 years' time ` what do you think it will be like? More socially accepting and, like, racially accepting as well. I mean, if you look at, like, 10 years ago compared to now, there's already such a big difference. So then, like, what can 10 more years do? I guess we're not as explicit about culture as a lot of people, you know, might expect one to be in order to be doing culture right. But I think that we've moved beyond tolerance to celebration. and to just, sort of, basically saying, 'It's there. It's fine. It's just` Get on with it.' If Rangitoto College reflects NZ as it might be in perhaps 20 years' time, then I think we have to ask what are they doing right. And I think what they're doing right is rather than saying there's one way to be a Kiwi, they're saying there's lots of different ways. LIGHT-HEARTED MUSIC After four months, Karthik, with his IT skills, has found a job with a top software company. I listen to these ministers and politicians who turn up to various immigrant community events, and they're really positive. They're talking about the benefits these immigrants contribute to NZ, and they thank them for that. They don't always use that same language when they talk to a wider constituency. So I think they're a bit cautious about what the kickback might be in terms of saying, publically, too loudly, that immigration is actually having a very beneficial effect on NZ. And after not seeing his wife and son for seven months, they're finally reunited. They say imitation's the greatest form of flattery. If you believe organisations like the OECD, uh, they hold NZ's Residence Programme up as probably one of the best managed permanent migration programmes in the world. And the way that we run our Residence Programme now has been copied by Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia in recent years. In theory, Karthik is going to be a valuable NZer, paying more taxes than the government will have to spend on him and his family. How many wheels does this bus have? 10. 10 wheels? 10. 10? Public perception is that the doors are open and pretty much anyone can just walk in. Reality is that we are incredibly selective about who we let in. They tend to be very highly skilled, highly educated and highly employable. They've got to get a job offer. So, make it easy? No. I absolutely take my hat off to every last one of them. In fact, when I handed over their passport with their residence visa, if I was the government, I'd have a ceremony. Man, I would pin a medal to their chest and thank them from the bottom of my heart for putting up with everything we put in their path. AUDIENCE CHEERS It seems pretty clear to me that the economic gains of immigration are a no-brainer. So, what do we lose? For me, it's nothing. So, maybe instead of us feeling like we're doing them a favour and expecting them to do all the changing, maybe we need to remember that they're doing us a favour as well.